Google instant is good for tablets/phones, not for desktop computers. Too bad they rolled it out to everybody I don't like it too much either, but can live with it.
Funny, I've been working on a Sharepoint project the last two months. This could have been a 3 man-day PHP/MySQL job yet it required 1 Project Manager and 2 devs (one full-time, 1 part-time) 2 months of work! The reason it took so long is that we couldn't touch code (think paranoid Fortune 50 company).
And then they talk of TCO and miss profits: they throw money down the drain, what do they expect?
Good one! Like the idea. The UI needs some hard thinking but for a prototype it's very good. If you had a vision to actually make this happen and include all other transport options I think you wouldn't have too much trouble finding someone to throw money your way.
A bump like that should be for backward incompatible changes but it actually looks like a makeover to appeal more to serious biz customers that would have trouble getting on to a 1.0 technology.
Facebook could cannibalize all of these markets you mention: nothing prevents them from turning it into a marketplace of new/used stuff and a platform to watch movies on or sell songs. Have a look at the (pirate friendly) Russian vkontakte.ru: whole american TV series and movies can be watched there.
could-- more likely, I think that it won't. What's Facebook do? It helps you connect, and reconnect with friends and family -- what's that have to do with buying and selling goods? Why do I need to watch shows on Facebook, and not somewhere else?
I'm not convinces of this last point -- what my friends and family like has a lot to do with what I like when we do it together moreso than what our actual similarities in taste are.
Something like this has effectiveness which goes as a function of the number of active nodes. It's much easier to increase that locally. Scaling by adding other areas after you've knocked a few corners off and gotten a reasonably active network going is relatively straightforwards compared to trying to eat the whole pie at once.
Facebook and Craigslist both did this very successfully.
I don't see why this is an issue. The only reason to keep something at one city is if the 'missions' are all supposed to be physical errands. But that's not the case, and it should be allowed to develop into however people find it most useful.
Limiting it to one city or region would be a mistake, in my opinion. This isn't a local story, any more than Mechanical Turks or oDesk is.
